The only rule listed on the Naked Friendsgiving event website, italicized
and in all-caps beneath a brief schedule of events—come watch movies, play
games, eat yummy food!—was ABSOLUTELY NO CLOTHES. Then there are
those assumed rules that always apply, even when not explicitly stated:
Compliment Your Host’s Home. Don’t Stare.

I tried not to. Artie, the Friendsgiving organizer, towered over the front
gate that separated his dwelling from the neighboring homes where the lowly
townspeople lived. He’d bragged online that he was tall in person. But in
real life, person felt like a misnomer. He was a giant. His toes dove off
the edge of his sandals.

I followed his crouching form around to the backdoor, past the dimly lit
laundry room where he instructed me to leave my shoes, through the kitchen
with the cute French windows disguised behind blackout curtains and the
cuckoo clock that read twenty after 1PM, into the dark living room, where
the windows were also closed for privacy. It was decorated minimally and,
Artie thought I should know, he did it all by himself.

He lifted a long, hairy index finger and spoke with the eagerness of a
middle school snitch.

The purple couch on which a cluster of young men sat watching The Color Purple from a flatscreen? “I upholstered
that.”

The distressed turquoise console table that held several cellphones and a
framed picture of a cat? “I painted that.”

The vinyl-wood flooring? “All me.”

I couldn’t help but notice that the living room was bordered by a trough
filled with polished stones. “This is such a lovely…” I reached inside and
and rubbed one of the rocks between my fingers, trying to distract myself
from something that had been perplexing me from the moment I stepped into
his home. “Garden?”

“Thanks,” Artie told me. “I have quite the green thumb!”

His heavy laugh boomed through the room, and the seated men watching Whoopi
Goldberg mend a pair socks turned to stare at me, the Naked Friendsgiving
newbie. I might have considered their blatant ogling a breach in the rules,
but for one small yet remarkable fact:

I had my clothes on and so did they.

Artie guided me to a foot stool with a pretty daisy pattern. I sat down,
pretending that it was totally normal that I was still in my sweatpants and
hoodie. It was normal that none of us was naked. This was, after all, how
normal people spent their Thanksgivings.

And isn’t that exactly what I wanted? To experience a normal Thanksgiving
for the first time, no matter if it was with naked strangers, a week before
the actual holiday? Reading the event page weeks before, I’d thought the
nudity aspect lent it a more traditional quality. It’s not as if the
Wampanoag tribe arrived at Plymouth Rock wearing wool scarves and tacky
holiday sweaters.

But sure, clothes were fine, too. I’m open. I’m flexible.

An Asian man on the couch introduced himself to me as as Juan. Juan was
twenty-five and wore his hair in a faux-hawk and his eyebrows pierced. Next
to him was a nineteen-year-old Asian man named Tito, and a
twenty-three-year-old White man who turned out to be Mexican named Hans.
Standing by the table with the phones was a person who informed me neither
of his race, age, or name. He reminded me of a totem pole of a bear I saw
outside of a liquor store in Tijuana once. It had black jewels for eyes,
and its mouth was frozen in a resigned yawn as it watched Californians
prance in and out gushing over their cheap bottles of mezcal.

After telling me everyone’s stats, Juan placed his hand on Tito’s thigh.
“So what brings you here?” he asked.

Whoopi Goldberg sobbed onscreen.

I worried telling the truth might bring down the room. It’s not that I
thought it was sad that I’d never had a real Thanksgiving. When I was
younger, my Nicaraguan mother never put too much stress on the holiday, and
if my Puerto Rican father did give thanks wherever he was, I doubt he cared
that much either. Mom’s fast-food job didn’t allow her to request
Thanksgiving off, and because my family was scattered throughout several
states and continents, we—my older brother, mother, and me—usually
celebrated the day with a slightly elevated version of what we normally
ate. Empanadas. Cranberry sauce from the can. Every few years, flan. As
soon as we finished our meals, Mom would slip into her bedroom for a nap
while my brother and me disappeared to our room to play video games. I
never understood what the big deal was. As I grew older, my
Birkenstock-wearing friends turned on Thanksgiving as well, parroting the
well-known but often-avoided fact that soon after their bridge-building
dinner, the pilgrims turned around and slaughtered Native American people
throughout America. The Thanksgiving bandwagon burned down to a bed of hot
coals. I’d missed it, and now that I was in my late twenties, I didn’t know
if it was too late to climb on.

Yet every year it rolls back. In elementary school art classes, children
discover their hands are the same shape as turkeys. Macy’s dusts off their
Kermit and Snoopy floats and parades them through Manhattan. There’s Black
Friday! Your favorite episode of Friends! At a diner in LA, a
perky waitress recently offered me a special holiday menu that featured a
turkey and stuffing burger. It was okay.

I didn’t want this year to be okay, like every other one I’d spent
ambivalent to the holiday. I wanted it to be great, to share in the
excitement. And if I didn’t have drunk uncles to argue politics around the
table with, then I’d make due by dabbing some concealer on my ingrown pubic
hairs, driving to Pomona, and sitting around a group of naked strangers
watching The Color Purple. Except now they were staring at me,
waiting for me to tell them what brought me here.

No, I didn’t think my answer was sad. It was pathetic.

My family was in Florida and Nicaragua and everywhere else, my friends had
flown to their respective homes, and I’d bought the wrong concealer shade
at Walgreens. Light to Medium instead of Median Tan. My genitals, if they
ever got to see them, were orange. I was a poser, trying to pass these
nudists as loved ones.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You know?”

Juan blinked at me.

I blurted out a list of acceptable-sounding reasons, hoping one of them
might stick: “I guess I just thought it’d be fun.” “I’ll go anywhere with
free food.” “I’ve always wanted to come to Pomona!”

The group nodded and settled back into enjoying the movie, apparently
satisfied with my answer. Whoopi Goldberg continued to take her husband’s
abuse. Her fist shot up to cover her mouth the few times she smiled. She
was embarrassed of her teeth. She was afraid to look happy. Out of my
peripheral, I watched Artie and Juan and Tito and Hans. The bear who never
introduced himself glared down at his phone. This was what all the fuss was
about? If naked Thanksgiving was a bust, I couldn’t imagine how
boring the real thing must be.

I believe that, similar to X-Men and the Olsen twins, gay people have the
ability to communicate with each other using our minds. Maybe that’s why,
at precisely the moment the thought of leaving entered mine, Tito said, “ So…”

Which Juan followed with, “I know.”

Artie rounded out the conversation, adding, “Yeah.”

Hans peeled off his white Hello Dolly! t-shirt and set it on the
ground. “There!” he said.

The Bear looked up from his phone.

Juan raised one pierced eyebrow and reached over to Tito’s crotch. “Need
help with these?” he asked.

This wasn’t a sex party. I figured they knew each other. Maybe they were
together?

Tito giggled. For a moment, a pair of buckteeth showed behind his lips. He
hid them with the back of his hand and blushed. “Go ahead,” he said.

Juan dove in to unbutton Tito’s jeans. He struggled to pull the top button
out of its slot. Tito giggled some more. “I’m sorry,” he said, pawing
Juan’s hands away. “I’m ticklish!”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Hans wagged his finger. He was in his
underwear now.

I hadn’t budged. I was mesmerized by the action surrounding me, too intent
on seeing how this would end to realize that I was a part of it, too.

Artie hoisted himself off the couch and removed his shirt, revealing the
rings of stretch marks under his armpits. With his arms up, and his shirt
covering his face, he looked like an ancient, majestic Redwood. Once he
freed himself, he chimed in to agree, “Yeah, Juan, stop apologizing for
taking up space. You deserve to be here. Try saying ‘Thank you’ instead.”

This was the only time I’d heard Tito say sorry. It didn’t seem dire enough
to warrant a Self-Esteem Master Class.

“I know, I know,” Tito said. He looked over at Juan, who’d finally released
the button. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Juan stood up and stepped in front of Tito, lifting
Tito’s legs on either side of his thighs like wheelbarrow handles. In one
quick movement, he yanked his jeans off, leaving Tito in nothing but a
jockstrap. “Voila!” he said. “Magic.”

“Nice underwear.” Hans smiled. It wasn’t clear whether he meant it for Tito
or Artie or Juan, who’d removed his belt and let his pants fall to the
floor on their own.

It certainly wasn’t meant for The Bear. He hovered by the cellphone table,
quietly beaming with delight, pulling his shirt to hide his round belly. We
were the only ones left.

I didn’t want to seem chicken, so I took my clothes off, too, watching The
Bear out of one eye, suspicious that he might be taking photographs. This
group had hosted several nude events in the past, I remembered from the
website, so I assumed many of them were friends. But maybe The Bear was
like me: Someone who came from nowhere, looking for something, lying about
their intentions. Or was he insecure? Whatever his deal was, this was a
nude event. It’s not like we were surprising him with an impromptu strip.
He should have been prepared for this.

I used my eyes to point him out to Artie.

ABSOLUTELY NO CLOTHES, my eyes said. RIGHT?

Artie shrugged. He was a peaceful giant.

The rest of the group was too busy admiring each other’s underwear to
notice The Bear being weird. “Feel these!” Hans told Tito, holding his
candy-cane patterned briefs out for him to inspect. “Aren’t they so soft?”
Tito’s hand fondled the material, his fingers inches from the outline of
Hans’s flaccid hanging penis. “So soft,” Tito said. Hans’s penis stiffened.

“Oh man. Sorry,” he said.

“Now who can’t stop apologizing?” Tito giggled.

The Bear watched on in silence. I wondered whether being observed was part
of the allure of Naked Friendsgiving. That’s not what I signed up for. But
this wasn’t my house. Those weren’t my polished stones. I let it go, and
resigned myself to staying out of his cellphone camera’s range. I’d done
burlesque shows in the past and had half-nude pictures of me printed in
local newspapers. I wasn’t that afraid of having naked images of me
released, and I could have been paranoid anyway. If no one else minded, I
wasn’t about to start any unnecessary drama.

An hour later, we sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, picking at
chicken wings and green beans from Styrofoam plates with our fingers. I’d
brought along a nice harvest salad, complete with cranberries, sliced
almonds, and an apple-cider vinaigrette, because that was the kind of thing
people on TV ate during Thanksgiving. It remained in the kitchen,
apologizing to the dwindling bottles of champagne for taking up space.

We were fully naked now and, of course, talking about boys.

“I haven’t bottomed in over a year,” Hans was saying. His long balls were
pressed to the ground. They resembled grocery bags waiting to be brought
inside.

“Mhm,” Artie confirmed. “Your bussy is like a piercing. You have
to keep it open for six months or it’ll close back up.”

“Ew! I hate that word.” Hans scrunched up his nose. “Bussy. Why do
we have to compare our parts to girls? I do not have a pussy. It’s
a hole. Call it that.”

“How about bole then?” Artie suggested.

“That doesn’t even make sense, Artie!” Tito shook his head. “Everyone has
holes, not just girls. Holes don’t have genders, stupid.”

Hans picked at his teeth with a pinky nail. “How could I keep it open? It’s
im-pos-si-ble to meet guys looking for a serious relationship.” He smacked
his lips to emphasize his frustration. “I swear, everyone just wants to
hook up. When someone messages me on the apps asking for NSA sex, I tell
them NEXT!”

“Really? That’s funny, considering we’re at a nude party.” I hadn’t meant
to say that out loud.

Artie made an attempt to disguise a laugh as a cough, while Juan and Tito
openly snickered. Hans looked me up and down. I felt his eyes on my flabby
stomach, the zits on my chest. I adjusted my plate to cover my orange
crotch. “It’s really not the same, hun,” he said. “Like, at all.”

I needed a drink. I raised the solo cup I’d filled with champagne to my
lips, but it was empty.

“I’m gonna go get another one,” I announced to the group. “Anyone want a
refill?”

Tito stared at his bottle of water.

“Tito? You want one?”

I’d briefly forgotten his age. That he was only nineteen suddenly came back
to me. He answered before I could take my offer back.

“No thanks.” He polished his overgrown nails on his abs. “I’m not supposed
to be drinking right now because of my meds.”

“Good call,” Artie said.

Juan patted him on the back. “Yeah, smart.”

The Bear emerged from the bathroom, the wet outlines of his hands on his
jeans. How long had he been gone? He returned to his guard spot by the
phones.

“You doing okay?” Hans asked.

This was not one of those times where I could read everyone’s minds. They
were obviously hiding something. Tito kept his eyes on his bottle of water.

“I’m just going through a lot right now.”

The air in the room grew thick. I’d had one too many. My vision blurred.
Something smelled burnt.

“But I’m fine,” Tito continued. “I’m just bummed my therapist’s office is
closed on actual Thanksgiving.” He looked up at me. “I came out this
Sunday. Like, this Sunday. My parents kicked me out.” My chest
became hot. “They said I’m going to Hell. You wanna know the funny part?
They’re not even religious. I’m the religious one. I go to church
every Sunday!”

I felt my eyes water at the familiar story. I wasn’t sure why I was getting
so emotional. I didn’t know Tito any more than I knew any of the thousands
of homeless LGBTQIA2-S youth all over the world. I knew it was still a risk
for us to come out. I vaguely knew, and later confirmed, what the
statistics looked like: Some estimates indicate that 7% of the population
is LGBTQIA2-S, yet homeless LGBTQIA2-S youth make up 40% of all homeless
youth. I just wasn’t prepared to meet one at Naked Friendsgiving.

Out of all the places, he came here, to hang out with strangers, watch movies, play games, eat yummy food. I sometimes forget
there are things that get in the way of watching movies, playing games,
eating yummy food. That I’d spent my own nineteenth Thanksgiving at a gay
bar in Orlando, drinking with a friend to avoid having to go home. It was
one of the rare holidays when family visited. We sat at a booth listening
to Kylie Minogue.

My uncle, I told the friend. He drinks too much and starts grilling me
about girlfriends and shit. And my aunt sit there, not talking to anyone,
and we all know he has a second family but won’t say anything. And my mom
making flan and laughing like she doesn’t just want to go to sleep. It’s
all so weird.

He followed with his own reasons for fleeing home after dinner: My tia, and
my step-sister, and my primo, and…

And you’ve heard this story. But we got to choose to leave.

I wished I had a sleeve to wipe my eyes with.

“Where are you staying?” I asked Tito. I had a couch. Would my roommates
mind? How could they say no?

“I’m between places,” he said. “My cousins are letting me crash with them
for a while.”

“That’s good,” I said, stupidly. That’s good? It’s good
that your asshole parents threw you into the streets? At least you’re not
technically homeless yet? At the same time, I breathed with relief. He had
somewhere. Yes, my roommates would mind—How long? and Why didn’t you call
us first? and all kinds of smart questions I couldn’t ask right now. Did
good people ever ask things like that? I would have wanted to know, too.

Tito stared at his limp dick.

“That…” I tried to find the perfect word. Something that would let him know
that I understood, that I was there if he needed me, that everything would
turn out fine. Something better than “It gets better.” None of those things
were true. I didn’t understand. I was only here for the afternoon. I didn’t
know if it would get better. This was bad, and it might just stay bad.
“That sucks,” I said.

We were quiet.

Hans picked at a scab on his knee. “So, er, anyone want to watch a movie?”

“Is Mean Girls on Netflix?” Juan wanted to know.

“No,” said Artie. “Trust me. I checked.”

I reached for Tito’s hand. He placed his over mine. It weighed nothing. I
squeezed and he took it back.

Everyone seemed unfazed. I looked at The Bear, but even he acted as if he
already knew about Tito. He probably did. Maybe this conversation had
happened before I’d arrived.

Still, I felt ridiculous. Naked. At some silly Thanksgiving dinner because
I wanted to know what it’d be like to have a normal holiday? And here was a
nineteen-year-old who only wanted his therapist’s office to be open. I felt
gross. Not only were my problems trivial in comparison, I had the audacity
to be learning a lesson. If my life were a special Friends
Thanksgiving episode, this would be The One Where Naked Edgar Learns To Appreciate His Life. Even the
metaphor was too easy: A group of gay men gather to expose themselves in
more ways than one.

I felt ridiculous and gross and… angry.

Why the FUCK were these jerks treating Tito like he only mattered as much
as what we should watch next? Even if they’d already discussed it, at the
very least he didn’t deserve to be dismissed for Mean Girls. A
ringing sound penetrated my ears.

This has never happened before, I thought. I’ve never been this pissed off.

I could hear my anger out loud.

“FUCK!” Artie yelled. “The pie! The fucking pie is burning!”

It was the smoke detector.

We all jumped to our feet.

“Open the windows!” Artie ordered. He stomped into the kitchen. “Someone
get a towel and blow the smoke away!”

I ran to the nearest window, then paused. I couldn’t open the window. I was
naked.

“Wait!” I shouted to Juan and Tito, who were at the window at the other end
of the room. “Don’t! People will see us!”

Artie sprinted back into the living room carrying a pie tin. Whatever it
was before, now it was ash. “My poor pie,” he groaned. Smoke was trailing
rising from the charred top-layer. “I killed it.” He opened the front door
and dropped it onto the welcome mat.

“Close that!” I told him. “Your neighbors are going to see you.”

His eyes were red-rimmed. From the smoke, or the loss of his pie, or, I
want to believe, for Tito. “I don’t give a shit anymore,” he said. Maybe he
didn’t know. “This is my house. My house!” Maybe we were all angry. “Let
them see me!” He went from window to window, throwing each of them open. “I
don’t care!”

I checked my phone. It was 4PM.

“What are they going to do?” The Giant bellowed.

His mighty testicles shook in the air. The smoke detector wailed on and on,
a chorus of exclamation points. “Call the cops?! On me?! In my
house?!”

The houses on the block were silent. The townspeople inside prayed for
mercy.

The pie was burnt. The holiday was over.

I pulled my sweatpants back on, zipped my hoodie up. Tito giggled as The
Giant continued ranting: “I worked so hard on that pie! Do you know how
hard I worked?”

“I love you,” I told Tito. “Sorry. I have to go.”

“Thanks,” he said. Juan stepped behind him and wrapped his arms around his
chest. Tito leaned into him. If I ignored, for a moment, that Juan’s penis
was pressing against Tito’s back, they looked like brothers. “I’m fine.”

I wanted to believe that, too.

“This,” the pilgrims told the Wampanoag, “is America.” The Wampanoag rolled
their eyes and passed the corn.